I don't think it's fair to say that Bush has been preaching racism. He's always been very careful about that. However, he's always been very patronizing towards the Middle East, and i suppose there's some inherent racism in that.
He's been preaching Islamic menace pretty hard. He has given lip service to not making that racist, and every once in a while says something about "good Islam," but honestly that strikes me more as ass-covering than any real attempt at countering the underlying racist message.
The average US citizen is not particularly good at drawing distinctions between Arab and Moslem, let alone between extremist and non-extremist and all of the other variations. I think Bush knows that perfectly well and was actively exploiting that to push his case for war. Now that it's getting in the way of doing business, it bothers him a lot, but it sure was serving his purposes earlier.
But your point about how these people he wants to do business with are his people is well-taken.
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syntheid
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Date: 2006-03-12 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 11:13 pm (UTC)The average US citizen is not particularly good at drawing distinctions between Arab and Moslem, let alone between extremist and non-extremist and all of the other variations. I think Bush knows that perfectly well and was actively exploiting that to push his case for war. Now that it's getting in the way of doing business, it bothers him a lot, but it sure was serving his purposes earlier.
But your point about how these people he wants to do business with are his people is well-taken.